Educational research and the economy of happiness and love

EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND THE ECONOMY OF HAPPINESS AND LOVE

RICHARD BATES

Deakin University AARE Presidential Address, Twenty-fourth Annual Conference, Newcastle, December 1994

Introduction It is customary for presidential addresses to provide an encyclopaedic review of past follies, a brilliant synthesis of present possibilities, and a clairvoyant prediction of future salvation for the profession. Given the dignity of the presidential office, it is common for these pronouncements to be made with magisterial authority. Against these criteria I am afraid that I shall disappoint you. You may choose to locate your disappointment either in my inadequacies as an intellectual or, perhaps more charitably, in the impossibility of such grand narratives in the post-modern world. You may also recognise in my paper strong tendencies towards revisionism, humanism and modernism, all of which I recognise as problematic issues in contemporary debates. Indeed the title of my paper 'Educational Research and the Economy of Happiness and Love' may well appear as simply eccentric for an association devoted to methodological debates and paradigm wars. Nonetheless I hope, however ambitiously, to establish its relevance, indeed, its centrality in the architecture of our profession.

My text is taken from that great moral philosopher, Adam Smith, and from the great book to which he devoted the larger part of his life and which provided the context for his essay on The Wealth of Nations: his treatise on The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

The starting point for his argument regarding moral sentiments was the observation that 'the chief part of human happiness arises from the consciousness of being beloved' (quoted in Muller 1993). Love and the approbation of one's fellows was a result of the development of particular virtues, and much of Smith's attention was devoted to an analysis of the role of institutions in producing these virtues.

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One of the important functions of the market as an institution was indeed its moral effect in producing prudence, discipline in the pursuit of self interest, and the ability to defer short-term gratification for long term interests (Muller 1993). But Smith was not oblivious to the potential of commercial society to produce behaviour at odds with these virtues:

Commercial society, in Smith's portrait, did not make most men highly virtuous and noblembut then no society could. It did, however, hold out the potential of a society in which most men would be decent, gentle, prudent and free. Yet that potential was threatened by forces within commercial society itself. Indeed, the pursuit of individual wealth might lead to consequences which threatened the very virtues upon which commercial society depends (Muller 1993, p. 137).

Consequently, Smith argued, the role of government was to foster the development of institutions which would counteract the hazards of commercial society.

One of the most fundamental hazards arose from the very division of labour upon which commercial society was based. The cultural effects on workers, who during Smith's time had little access to education or to other cultural institutions, was seen by Smith as pernicious and in need of state intervention. Smith's depiction of the fate of workers in an unrestrained commercial society is graphic:

The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him, not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgement concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging... His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilised society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government take some pains to prevent it (in Muller 1993, p. 149).

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Education, said Smith, was an antidote that government must procure in overcoming the ill effects of commercial society. Smith was one of the first and foremost advocates of a publicly funded, universal education system through which even poor people could acquire the skills of reading, writing and arithmetic. The primary function of education was not, for Smith, an economic one, but a cultural and social one. Cultural, in the sense that without education the commercially produced ignorance and stupidity of the working poor would deny both awareness of and proper participation in the wider society. Social, in the sense that the responsibility that derived from informed participation and self- awareness would lead to greater social cohesion. (Indeed, he believed that increased self-respect on the part of the lower orders would lead to greater respect for the virtues of their social superiors and therefore less likelihood of social revolution).

Smith also argued that the costs of defence, justice, and infrastructure as well as education all increase as society advances, and that higher taxation is the price that is paid for higher levels of civilisation: an argument that was, of course, perfectly consistent with his major employment as a tax collector-- the Commissioner for Customs in Edinburgh.

The state, through the institutional structures funded by taxation, was to provide those corrective mechanisms which supported the moral sentiments necessary to counter the potential excesses of commercial society. 'The visible hand of the state would counteract the potentially stultifying effects of the invisible hand of the market' (Muller 1993, p. 152).

Thus a balance between commercial society and moral sentiments could be struck. Indeed, Smith's primary concern was with social cohesion which itself was particularly threatened by contemporary events such as those that brought about the French Revolution. His view of the importance of the market was that it was a mechanism by which the extremes of unearned wealth, and the potential for social revolution that such extremes implied, could be mitigated. The market was to be an instrument of wealth creation and distribution that was relatively independent of inherited inequalities, and which would serve to improve the condition of the poor. As Muller observes:

... The Wealth of Nations was written not for men who sought to increase their own wealth but for those who might be motivated to advance the public good by increasing the wealth of the nation and strengthening its character-building institutions (Muller 1993, p. 164).

The end result was to be the production of certain virtues: the virtues of 'those who are contented to walk in the humble paths of private and peaceable

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life...temperance, decency, modesty and moderation...industry and frugality' (Muller 1993, p. 165). For these virtues, a man might expect to be both respected and loved and to bring about the happiness of others and himself. The integration of virtue and industry would produce an economy of happiness and love. Yet the fruit of Adam Smith's endeavourmthose who claim his parentage~have turned economics into the dismal science. It is a science which has failed.

The failure of the dismal science Smith clearly saw the role of the state as sustaining the market as an engine of growthma mechanism for facilitating the redistribution of wealthmand as the architect of institutions designed to produce moral sentiments that would ennoble the poor and strengthen the foundations of social life. In this sense he produced an elaborate argument in favour of the tradition that Pusey sums up in his recent review:

...nation societies (and federations like the emerging Europe) have not one coordinating structure but two. On the one side they have states, bureaucracies and the law, and, on the other, economies, markets and money. It is with these structures that we collectively coordinate our relations with the world, our work, our social interactions, and most other aspects of our life that we understand as 'civil society' and normatively define the notions of citizenship, democracy and human rights (Pusey 1993, p. 5).

The difficulty we currently face is a profound lack of balance between these two steering mechanisms. The rhetoric of government is overwhelmingly concerned with economies, markets and money, and with the efficiency and competitiveness of the engines of economic growth. Macro and micro economic reforms are directed towards the improvement of both private and public agencies, all of which are defined as industries with particular production functions. Key educational documents such as the Finn (1991) and Mayer (1992) Reports carry the language and analyses of such reform processes into education. The main components of the rhetoric are, as John Hutnyk has pointed out:

1 The reorganisation of work in the direct interests of industry and national economic goals

2 The management of private and governmental institutions in ways that increase the surveillance and control of individuals and direct them towards the service of industrial culture.


3 The marginalisation of concerns over social justice, community participation and citizen rights

4 The increasing integration of the education sector and schools systems at all levels into the processes of global production

5 Primary emphasis in education on the vocationalisation of the curriculum, retraining and multiskilling (Hutnyk 1991, p. 1).

The result, in education as elsewhere, is the subordination of social to economic concerns. For those whose long traditions of service in the building of a nation state in which social objectives were paramount, the result is a reversal of hard won achievements and the creation of a social amnesia which forgets both the burdens and the achievements of the past. Nugget Coombs, regarded by many as the architect of Australia's post-war reconstruction, for instance observes that:

...the intellectual and moral basis of Australian society is becoming corrupted...the driving force behind this [is a] view of the economy as a machine independent of social purposes (in Pusey 1993, p. 2).

It is not a view of which Adam Smith would have approved. And it is a view which sits at odds with what Australians want. What the people want is not the free market Utopia of the economic rationalists, deregulated, predatory and innocent of social purpose. For example, Campbell's (1992) study of the social vision of Australians from all walks of life showed a quite different vision:

...the Australians in our study provide an alternative view of humankind- -one of a caring, just, morally responsible, compassionate and ecologically aware species. [There was an].., overwhelming endorsement of the goal of social justice and [an] emphasis on personal goals...People should matter in the future Australian society where all members are assured of equitable chances of developing their potential and sharing equitably in what their society has to offer (Campbell 1992, p. 55).

Quite so. These moral sentiments could have been written by Adam Smith two hundred years ago.

Robert Lane has recently reached similar conclusions after an exhaustive study of over 1000 pieces of research into what people want from 'The Market Experience':

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...evidence shows that economic growth does increase a sense of well being in a national community...[But] being richer than others in any society does not, or at least, not nearly as much as the ideology and the premises of the market would suggest. Money does not buy happiness for individuals because it does not buy the things that make people happiest, a happy family life, friends, enjoyment of work and a sense of accomplishment therein (Lane 1991, p. 546).

Again, Adam Smith observed the same phenomenon. There is an empirical relationship between certain forms of economic life and the production of happiness and love, but it is by no means a linear relationship between individual wealth and happiness.

There is both an epistemological and an empirical issue here, and one of great importance to educational researchers as well as educational policy makers. It is related to the problematic nature of particular theories of economics which lie at the heart of the 'locust plague' of economic rationalists currently ravaging Canberra (Pusey 1991 ).

Taking the empirical issue first, the mismatch between economic predictions and management which inform government policies and the empirical outcomes of those policies has never been greater. Paul Ormerod puts it this way:

The world economy is in crisis. Unemployment in Western Europe rises towards the 20 million mark. America faces the deep-seated problem of the twin deficits, the federal budget and the balance of trade. Vast tracts of the former Soviet empire are on the brink of economic collapse. Japanese companies, faced by the deepest recession since the war, are on the verge of breaking the long-standing and deep-rooted social convention of lifetime employment.

The orthodoxy of economics, trapped in an idealised, mechanistic, view of the world, is powerless to assist.

In Western Europe, the economics profession eulogised the Exchange Rate Mechanism and monetary union, despite frequent bouts of massive currency speculation and the inexorable rise of unemployment throughout Europe during its years of existence. Teams of economists descend on the former Soviet Union, proclaiming not just the virtues but the absolute necessity of moving to a free-market system as rapidly as possible. Such prescriptions involve the establishment of market economies of greater purity than those contemplated by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. But despite governments in the former Soviet bloc doing everything they are t01d, their economic situation worsens.


. . .On a more mundane level, economic forecasts are the subject of open derision. Throughout the Western world, their accuracy is appalling. Within the past twelve months alone . . . . forecasters have failed to predict the Japanese recession, the strength of the American recovery, the depth of the collapse in the German economy, and the turmoil in the European ERM.

Yet to the true believers, within the profession itself, the ability of economics to understand the world has never been greater (Ormerod 1994, p. 3).

Part of the reason for these difficulties lies in the professional isolation of contemporary economists who have detached themselves from the historical and social analyses which might contextualise and give meaning to their work. As Ormerod puts it:

Contemporary orthodox economics is isolated. It is isolated from its roots in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when economists were by no means afraid to theorise, but did so purely to illustrate and understand the great practical issues of the day. Its method of analysis is isolated from the wider context of society in which the economy operates, and which Adam Smith believed to be of great importance (Ormerod 1994, p. 21).

One of the consequences of this isolation is that the epistemic foundations of economics have taken on a theological importance akin to the medieval insistence that the universe revolved around the earth as the centre of God's creation.

The chief mantra of the orthodox economic model is the notion of free markets. This belief has been extended into the political arena by the New Right in its policy packages which insist that free market solutions are always best. As Ormerod observes: 'It is this latter view that is profoundly mistaken. Markets and profits are crucial, but the pure free market model itself is deeply flawed' (1994, p. 65). Indeed:

...there appear to have been so many violations of the conditions under which competitive equilibrium exists that it is hard to see why the concept survives, except for the vested interests of the economics profession and the link between prevailing ideology and the conclusions which the theory of general equilibrium provides (Ormerod 1994, p. 66).

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The distance between the model of competitive equilibrium and real-world behaviour provides a major empirical hurdle which it seems impossible for economists to clear. The classic defence of the model is, of course, that models, no matter how complex, always simplify the real world, and that such simplification is necessary if we are eventually to reach an understanding of real world behaviour. Even if the general principle is conceded it is still incumbent on the modellers to demonstrate s o m e significant relationship between the model and empirical data. No such demonstration exists in the case of the 'as if model of competitive equilibrium.

The challenge is not only empirical. It is also epistemological. Most models of competitive equilibrium assume a timeless environmentmone where the past or future does not exist. But, as Dasgupta and Heal demonstrate, once the uncertain conditions of the future are introduced into models of competitive equilibrium, many of the results from the standard model of competitive equilibrium no longer hold:

It is research such as [that of Dasgupta and Heal] that creates the most difficulties for orthodox defenders of the model of competitive equilibrium. By accepting, for the purposes of analysis, all the assumptions of the competitive model, and by refining them and making them more precise, it demonstrates the improbability of their existence in practice (Ormerod 1994, p. 81 ).

Again, it is assumed in current policy in many Western countries, including Australia, that any single move towards increased competition is better than none. But Lipsey and Lancaster, for instance, have demonstrated theoretically that removing one or some of the violations of the assumptions in a competitive model is insufficient to guarantee an improvement in the performance of the model. The only condition under which such guarantees can be given is where al l

such violations are removed:

This is a result of great practical significance. For in reality, not just in America but in every Western country there are many breaches of the conditions required by the theoretical model of competitive equilibrium. There is a presumption, which...has been the driving force of policy in many Western countries in the past decade or so, that each single move towards the ideal competitive economy will improve the performance of the actual economy. Lipsey and Lancaster showed that no such general presumption can be made...It cannot be argued that increasing the degree of competition in the economy, when other obstacles to competition


remain, will automatically improve the performance of that economy (Ormerod 1994, pp. 83-4).

Again, it is assumed in the general model that an economy will settle down to a specific equilibrium. But as Richard Day has shown, many possible equilibria exist for any economy at any particular time. These multiple equilibria present considerable problems for government policies which assume that the invisible hand of the market will guide the economy to the best possible equilibrium. But, indeed, if various equilibria are possible, government intervention is required to determine which equilibrium is optimal for any given society (Ormerod 1994, pp. 86-7).

The existence of multiple possible equilibria also produces an all but infinite complexity in the problem of rational choice, which is the foundation of the theory of general equilibrium. The condition of complete information which is fundamental to the 'pure' model of general equilibrium means that each individual must have access to and be able to compute from all information about not only a single 'natural' equilibrium, but all possible equilibria simultaneously. Moreover, as other individuals and governments make choices between various desired equilibria those choices must also be factored into the computation. The conclusion of such an analysis is clear.

The model of competitive general equilibrium ...'is strained to the limit by the problem of choice of information. It breaks down completely in the face of limits on the ability of agents to compute optimal strategies.' In other words, once a realistic concept of uncertainty is introduced, the model ceases to be of value (Ormerod 1994, p. 90).

If the model of competitive general equilibrium collapses under the combined weight of its own internal inconsistencies and its failure to reasonably approximate empirical conditions, then what of other current economic dogmas such as, for instance, the supposed negative relationship between inflation and unemployment: that rises in unemployment are associated with decreases in money wages and therefore in inflation. This is known as the Phillips curve, and it is fundamental to Keynesian economics in that it supports the idea that governments, by adopting a wages policy, can intervene in the market to maintain growth in employment while simultaneously controlling inflation.

The problem is that during the late seventies and most particularly after 1974 the Phillips curve broke down in economy after economy, giving rise to the Friedmanite notion that there is a 'natural' rate of unemployment which cannot be altered by government policies designed to alter the level of spending in an

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economy. On the contrary, say Friedman and his colleagues, unemployment is determined by supply side forces, prime among which are wage rates which must be made sufficiently flexible so as to fall to the 'natural' level which sustains the model of general equilibrium. Ormerod (1994, pp. 124-125) points out the difficulty of this position:

...at the time of writing unemployment is around 3 million in deregulated Britain, in regulated France and in regulation-choked Italy, three countries of very similar populations. To the casual observer, these similar levels of unemployment might well suggest that labour market flexibility, or the lack of it, is not tremendously important in determining unemployment in these three large European economies with their quite different experiences of flexibility.

Further evidence of the absence of a 'natural' rate of inflation and its relationship to unemployment is derived from the differing experiences of various European economies following the oil shock of 1973-4. Prior to 1974, inflation was similar in most European countries at between 7-8%. Immediately after the oil price shock it rose across Europe to about 10-12%. But by early 1975, German inflation fell back to 4.3%, in France, Belgium and the Netherlands it remained at 10-12%, while British and Italian inflation rose from 10 to 20% in a single year.

The explanation of these different experiences cannot be found in the theory of general competitive equilibrium or in supply side economics theories about natural rates of inflation and unemployment. The only plausible explanation is, in fact, a social one:

In Germany, the workforce recognised very quickly that...their standards of living had to fall. The nation as a whole had lost part of its income to OPEC, so workers could not regain their standards of living by putting in claims for higher money wages. So an inflationary spiral of higher prices leading to higher wages leading in turn to higher costs and still higher prices was avoided. This was a triumph for the German concept of the social market, deliberately created after the war to aid recovery...In contrast, in varying degrees, the workforces elsewhere in Europe failed to realise that their living standards had to fall (Ormerod 1994, pp. 134-5).

This was notoriously the case in Britain, where successive Conservative and Labour Government policies fuelled inflation until it reached 20%.

The difference between the various countries experience was due to differences in social organisation. External shocks to individual economies can


clearly be modified, as in Germany, by the encouragement of values in which a system of consensus and cohesion prevails and in which moral sentiments are turned, not towards competitive individualism, but towards the common good, as Adam Smith suggested was the function of Government.

Further evidence of the existence of society and its role in economies is found in the achievement by a number of economies of low levels of unemployment for prolonged periods both before and after the 1973-4 oil shock:

Japan, Austria, Norway, Switzerland and until very recently Sweden and Finland--all these countries have maintained for most of the post war period very low levels of unemployment. And each, in its particular way has exhibited a high degree of shared social values, of what may be termed social cohesion, a characteristic of almost all societies in which unemployment has remained low for long periods of time.., this tradition recognises that there is such a thing as society, and that human welfare is not maximised by the ruthless pursuit of individual self-interest (Ormerod 1994, pp. 203-5).

An alternative to this model is, of course, that utilised by the United States, which allows for the continuous immigration of a pool of low cost labour in order to produce 'flexibility' in labour markets. This policy has certainly contained both wages and inflation and enlarged the total labour force, 'even though an adverse consequence has been the rejection by many of the low wages which are on offer to the unskilled, and the choice of crime as a career instead' (Ormerod 1994, p. 206).

The overall conclusion of current critical analyses of economics is that it suffers greatly from its isolation from social and historical information, and from its emphasis on linear models which show little internal integrity when more fully developed and little empirical validity when set against real world economic experience.

The context of educational research Despite its considerable failures and its transparent inadequacies, economic rationalism and its handmaiden, corporate managerialism, continue to drive government policy in both Canberra and the states/territories. Moreover, a model of the operations of education systems is being built that is dangerously close to that outlined and criticised above. Like the competitive general equilibrium model of the economy, this model is based upon the notion that social organisation is essentially mechanical in nature and that its performance in

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education, as elsewhere, can be improved by pulling the right leversmif they can only be found. The right levers are defined as inputs and control mechanisms, and increasingly attention is being directed towards outputs which can be used as measures of efficiency and effectiveness, and towards accountability mechanisms.

The model is simple enough and it has its own internal logic. It might well be the case, however, that like the model of competitive general equilibrium, its internal logic breaks down when pressed to include more complex and realistic assumptions and conditions. Moreover, it may bear little empirical relationship to the real world of schools, students, teachers and learning.

This model I will call the Unified National Model. Its component parts are, variously, the National Curriculum, National Assessment, the National Qualifications Framework, the National Teacher Competencies, supported and articulated through such agencies as the Curriculum Corporation, a redefined Australian Council for Educational Research, the National Teachers Council, and the National Office of Overseas Skills Recognition. Indeed, under Minister Dawkins, a great deal of energy, time and money were poured in to the attempt to establish this integrated structure. Initially this was done with the cooperation of the Australian Education Council, but has slowed somewhat under the more assertive and independent Council of Australian Governments (COAG). However, COAG has agreed that the various education systems' efficiency and effectiveness should be examined, along with that of other government service organisations. This is to be done through a benchmarking exercise conducted by the Industries Commission and apparently modelled on the benchmarking exercises conducted in the recent past on such Government Trading Enterprises as electricity, gas, water, railways, urban transport and port industries.

Benchmarking is an exercise where outputs are measured against inputs and comparative measures of costs and benefits are derived for individual systems which can then be measured against each other and against international best practice. This is not quite the intention of the originators of benchmarking, but it seems to be the version adopted by government. Where the Government Trading Enterprises have had their turn, it is now the turn of the Government Service Industries such as health, education, welfare, law and order.

The intention seems clear: to produce comparative figures of system efficiency and drive down costs or increase outputs for the same cos t - - particularly in systems with below average performance. Indeed, the logic behind such benchmarking seems already to have initiated a national race towards the average by those systems with above average per capita costs such as Victoria. This move on Victoria's part of course depresses the average and provides an incentive for other systems to produce still further efficiencies. You will


recognise similarities between this artificial construction and the model of competitive general equilibrium.

Moreover, the measures of inputs so far proposed by the Industries Commission Working Party are breathtakingly simple: Costs per capita for infrastructure, materials and personnel as inputs, and performance in standardised tests as outputs. The model is simple in the extreme, and bears little relationship to the diversity and complexity of educational activities in the real world.

Along with this economically rationalist approach to modelling and policy formation, an accompanying mechanism of implementation is being developed which derives from the strategies of cooperate managerialism. The hierarchisation of control, the devolution of operational accountability, and tight controls over performance through competency-based assessment, incremental progression and temporary employment contracts at all levels is to be the model for the public sector as for the private.

Now clearly there are inefficiencies in the public sector, but what corporate management is about to sweep away is not simply inefficiency, but also any broader notion of the public good which is defined solely in terms of public (ie. consumer) choice. But as we have seen, in the market system the idea of fully informed rational choice is highly problematic, both theoretically and empirically. The existence of such problems in marketised education systems has already been shown by Whitty (1994) in England and Gordon (1993) in New Zealand. As Giroux comments in the American context:

This view of educational leadership is paradoxical. Not only does it ignore the language of community, solidarity and the public good: it also draws unproblematically upon a sector of society that has given us the savings and loan scandals, the age of corporate buyouts, the proliferation of 'junk' bonds, insider trading, and the large increase in white collar crime. It has also produced multinational corporate mergers that eliminate jobs and violate the public trust, and it has made leadership synonymous with the logic of the bottom line, self interest, and corporate avarice (Giroux 1994, p. 7).

These are precisely the kind of dangers foreseen by Adam Smith as a natural outcome of unrestrained commercial society, and against which he sought the protection of governments whose purpose was to institutionalise those moral sentiments that could create social solidarity and limit gross excess. That government itself should seek to subordinate the public good to the unrestrained interests of commercial society would be beyond his comprehension.

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The challenge for educational research There is a challenge in all this for educators and for educational researchers. We are being presented with a highly simplified model of a complex educational world and faced with a coordinated and coercive managerial system of inducements and threats. It is, of course, possible for educators to adopt this model and seek to engineer compliance with its assumptions and demands in their own behaviour and that of others. For researchers, it is equally possible to service government contracts that seek the limited and partial information required by the model and to apportion blame to those whose efforts at compliance fail to satisfy. There are signs that some educators and some researchers will follow this path. Government has, after all, some authority left, even though it is increasingly mistrusted.

On the other hand, it seems to me, the integrity of the teacher and the researcher lies in the empirical basis of their professions. Teachers face the real world of the classroom and its social, cultural, political, economic and intellectual challenges on a day-by-day basis. There is, therefore, a common interest among teachers and educational researchers in telling it like it is, whatever models of general competitive educational equilibrium and mechanisms of corporate managerialism are devised by government.

What is missing from such models is precisely those elements that a properly educational researcher might provide:

The real challenge ... is to broaden [the] definition beyond the ethically truncated parameters of those concerns to the more vital imperatives of educating students to live in a multi-cultural world, to face the challenge of reconciling difference and community, and to address what it means to have a voice in shaping one's future as part of enriching and extending the imperatives of democracy of human rights on both a national and global level... (Giroux, 1992, p. 7).

Educational research can help to overcome:

... the refusal of the new educational reform movement to develop a critical moral discourse. Missing from the current mainstream emphasis on educational reform is a language that can illuminate what administrators, teachers, and other cultural workers actually do in terms of the underlying principles and values that structure the stories, visions and experiences they use to organise and produce particular classroom experiences and social identities (Giroux 1992, p. 7).


The integrity of educational researchers lies, therefore, only partly in our methodologies. It also lies in the empirical veracity of the information we provide to support the educational enterprise. Despite the attempts of government to define the educational enterprise in narrow economistic terms, the reality of educational activity is broader, more complex, more paradoxical, more challenging than their models allow. It is the role of educational researchers to tell this rich, complex story in ways that support the work and aspirations of students, teachers, administrators and schools and restrain the ideological construction of a false, restrictive and deformed model of education.

Most of all, perhaps, it is important for the focus of educational researchers to be shaped by the kind of balance advocated by Adam Smith. A balance which sees the necessity of both industry and virtue, and where the primary purpose of government is to compensate for and redress the excesses of commercial society.

For Adam Smith, the chief part of human happiness '. .... the consciousness of being beloved' was to be achieved through commitment to the Commonwealth, and those moral sentiments by which it might be secured. Indeed, only through such balance and such integrity can educational research contribute to the economy of happiness and love. It is a task worthy of our energies. It is a task of which Adam Smith would have approved.

References Campbell, W. J. et al (1992) Visions of a Future Australian Society: Towards an

Educational Curriculum for 2000 AD and Beyond, Ministerial Consultative Council on the Curriculum, Brisbane.

Finn, B. (Chairman) (1991) Young People's Participation in Postcompulsory Education and Training, Aust. Govt. Printing Service, Canberra.

Giroux, H. (1992) Educational Leadership and the Crisis of Democratic Government, Educational Researcher, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 4-11.

Gordon, E. (1993) A Study of Boards of Trustees in Canterbury. Schools, Christchurch, University of Canterbury.

Hutnyk, J. (1991) What is to be done about Arizona Junkets? Unpublished mimeo, University of Western Sydney.

Lane, R. (1991) The Market Experience, Cambridge University Press, New York. Mayer, E. (Chairman) (1992) Employment-Related Key Competencies: A

Proposal for Consultation, Mayer Committee, Melbourne. Muller, J. Z. (1993) Adam Smith in His Time and Ours, Free Press, New York. Ormerod, P. (1994) The Death of Economics, Faber, London.

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Pusey, M. (1993) Reclaiming the Middle Ground .... From New Right Economic Rationalism, paper presented at the University of Melbourne conference on Economic Rationalism: Economic Policies for the 1990s, 15/16 February.

Pusey, M. (1991), Economic Rationalism in Canberra: A Nation-Building State Changes its Mind, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Whitty, G. (1994) Deprofessionalising Teaching ? Occasional Paper 22, Deakin, A.C.T., Australian College of Education.

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Educational research and the economy of happiness and love